I spent four years as Forbes' Girl Friday, which to me meant doing a little bit of everything at once. As a member of the Forbes Entrepreneurs team, I looked at booming business and startup life with a female gaze. I worked on the PowerWomen Wealth and Celebrity 100 lists, keeping my ears pricked and pen poised for current event stories--from political sex scandals to celebrity gossip to international affairs. In 2012 I helped to put two South American women on the cover of FORBES Magazine: Modern Family star Sofia Vergara (the top-earning actress on U.S. television) and Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff, who is transforming the BRIC nation into an entrepreneurial powerhouse. Prior to Forbes I was at the Philadelphia CityPaper, where I learned more than any girl ever needs to know about the city's seedier trades. I studied digital journalism at The University of The Arts.
I left Forbes in November, 2013, to pursue other interests on the West Coast.

New Evidence The Gender Achievement Gap Starts In Childhood

There’s ample evidence that the gender gap persists at the top of the professional world: Women make up just 3.8% of the CEOS of the America’s largest companies, lead just 17 of the world’s nations and are paid—at least in this country—roughly 70 cents on the dollar that their male colleagues earn. It’s depressing stuff.

But new research from LinkedIn tells an even sadder story. In looking at the career aspirations of U.S. professionals as children, it seems that the astounding lack of women in some of the world’s most powerful professions could be explained by their childhood dreams.

LinkedIn asked 8,000 professionals to answer the question: “As a child what did you want to be when you grew up?” “These dreams of children are really pure.,” says LinkedIn career expert Nicole Williams. “This is pre what your parents thought you should be and certainly before you started thinking about salaries or societal roles and pressures of what you ‘should’ be. And that’s what makes them so telling.”

What’s the most telling is the differences in aspirations of young men and women roughly 20-30 years ago when today’s professionals (and LinkedIn members) were children.

Top Dream Jobs of U.S. Men

Professional or Olympic Athlete

Airplane or Helicopter Pilot

Scientist

Lawyer

Astronaut

Top Dream Jobs of U.S. Women

Teacher

Veterinarian

Writer, Journalist or Novelist

Doctor, Nurse or EMT

Singer

“The fact that childhood dream jobs are gendered isn’t all that surprising,” Williams says. “As children our dreams tend to come from what we see right in front of us. When I think of what I saw men and women doing in my own childhood I can say women were teachers and when I got on an airplane and saw who was flying—it was definitely a man.”

These are dreams that are dreamt before we reach the ages of questioning why I can’t be an astronaut too, or what it might take for me to go to the moon, Williams says. “These are pure aspirations that are usually drawn from societal norms.”

As depressing as these kiddie pipe dreams might be, I’m more troubled by the fact that one in three survey respondents told LinkedIn that they had achieved this “dream job.” The little girls of just a few decades ago have, in fact, gone on to become teachers—women continue to dominate education, nursing and veterinary science while men rule law, science and the airline industry.

But don’t get too sad, Williams tells me. “It’s important to remember that we’re talking about years and years ago when the people who are professionals today were children,” she says. The professional landscape has changed since her childhood and even my own—if not in leaps and bounds at lea tint he baby steps that have come as a result of affirmative action and shifting societal attitudes towards gender roles.

“It’s encouraging to think of the responses you’d get to these questions even 10 years from now,” she says. “I think the list of dream jobs from both genders would be vastly, vastly different.”

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I’ve been a participant, a delegate, a speaker within nothing more than a naming convention. Why follow in the shadow of others when your foot can make a bigger and more lasting impression upon those around you.

I was filled with pride when my daughter (two year’s old at the time) looked at her Letterland book for the letter ‘A’ and pointing to the picture of the astronaught said: “I wonder what her name is called?”

If you’ve been anywhere a kid’s clothing store or toy store in the last twenty years, nothing about these findings will surprise you. It would seem that the Free To Be You And Me kids grew up and became parents with 1950′s gender sensibilities. http://heresheisboys.com/2011/11/18/sugar-spice-and-dressing-for-vice/